Friday, June 28, 2013

Alums Call Shots at NHL Draft

Former college players have a big say in who will be taken Sunday in New Jersey.

Alums Call Shots at NHL Draft
The Nashville Predators’ draft table, led by David Poile (Northeastern), also features NCAA alums Paul Fenton (BU), Jeff Kealty (BU), Shawn Dineen (Denver) and Tom Nolan (UNH).

They aren’t as high profile as the general manager, and they won’t always be on stage for the photo with the first-round pick.

But the men with titles like Director of Amateur Scouting – more than one-third of whom played college hockey – have the biggest impact on what names are called in Sunday’s NHL Draft.

Former Collegians in NHL Front Offices | NHL Draft Rankings

Gentlemen like Brent Flahr, a 1996 Princeton graduate and now the Assistant General Manager in Minnesota, have coordinated their scouting staffs, traveled the globe, assembled detailed lists and will make many of the final calls on draft day (3 p.m. Sunday, NBC Sports Network/TSN).

General managers, of course, have the ultimate say in any draft-day decisions, and that’s a group that includes 12 former NCAA players itself. But in many cases, those general managers will defer to the true experts on their staff – the scouts who have spent the year visiting rinks around the world to find the top 18-year-old hockey players around.

Titles vary from team to team; Flahr, who has also spent time with Florida and Ottawa, is an assistant general manager. Jeff Kealty, who played at Boston University, is Nashville’s Chief Amateur Scout. Florida’s Scott Luce (Colgate) and San Jose’s Time Burke (New Hampshire) are both director of scouting for their organizations. Paul Castron (St. Lawrence) in Columbus, Jay Heinbuck (Northeastern) in Pittsburgh, Wayne Smith (Minnesota Duluth) in Boston and others are directors of amateur scouting.

They are joined on staff by dozens of fellow alums who are scouts, amateur scouts, pro scouts or collegiate scouts for NHL teams. In fact, more than 200 former college players worked in NHL front offices in 2012-13.

Each will be busy as the action gets underway Sunday, the culmination of a busy year of scouting.